


Fair Days

by scratchienails



Series: No Chance of Precipitation [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Angst, Datastormshipping, Excessive levels of thirst, Exploration of Link Sense, Humor, M/M, Series of unrelated ficlets based on tumblr prompts, Vrains requests/prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-07-01 07:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 19,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15769593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scratchienails/pseuds/scratchienails
Summary: Virtual terrorist and his cyber vigilante nemesis fumble through life and feelings.Datastorm ficlets based on prompts!New: not quite the definition of online dating, part 4AND a surprise sequel.





	1. Home

Ryoken wondered, sometimes, if his father would disapprove. It seemed obvious he would, of course, since the Ignis was still alive and obnoxious on Yusaku’s wrist. But then Ryoken removed it—Ai, he reminded himself, as strange as it seemed to do so—from the picture. Would his father still disapprove of Ryoken’s choice, of Yusaku?

His father rarely spoke about his mother, but when he did, he highlighted her quiet brilliance, her understated independence, her unwavering righteousness. Her human fragility. Ryoken grew up believing that is what made a worthwhile wife, and eventually  _wife_  became  _partner_  as he learned more about himself. Yusaku had each in spades; too much, maybe, for his father’s taste, but not for Ryoken’s.

He felt his mother would approve, without so much as a doubt. She would be proud too, proud that Ryoken had found someone that challenged him and pushed him: someone that forced him back in the right direction when he strayed but still inspired him to walk in new ways. He took comfort in that despite himself. 

He was too old to be pining after the pride of his parents.

Asou and Kyoko did not know where to stand on it. They dared not even approach the subject of Yusaku, avoiding the topic every time he visited their individual prisons. Before the trial, and the verdict, Ryoken would catch them sometimes watching the truck on the cliffs, with twisted, desperate faces. They never asked to meet him, and Ryoken did not offer. Hungry for redemption as they may have been, Yusaku didn’t owe them anything. The courts agreed, eventually, leaving the manor emptier than ever before.

Genome was more supportive, in his own ways, only bemoaning Yusaku’s lack of a womb. They would make such brilliant children, he whined, such an excellent fusion of high-quality DNA. Every time, Ryoken tried very hard not to throw the phone at the glass dividing them. 

There were ways for two men to have a child, in the reality of their technologically advanced era, but neither of them addressed it. Ryoken had no intentions of being a father, and they both knew it. 

Of his family, that only left Spectre, who made his opinion on the matter apparent: he did not like it, but he did not avoid it either, and that was the most Ryoken could ask for. 

And Ryoken didn’t think Spectre would approve of  _anyone_ he showed romantic interest in, so it was a moot point.

It was not terrible. His family did not hate him for loving their doom. It could be worse.

But there were times he wished their lives were simpler: that he and Yusaku had met in an Internet cafe and hit it off the normal way, and he’d brought a brilliant, beautiful stranger home to meet his family. That his father, an innocent man, lived to give them his blessing.

It was a foolish fantasy. Home, for Ryoken, has never been such a happy, easy place. But he was coming to learn that home didn’t have to be just a lonely mansion stained with guilt either. Home could be the plaster peeling off the walls of a shit-hole downtown, with leaky faucets and a lumpy mattress. Home could be the warmth of Yusaku curling into his side and the bags under Yusaku’s eyes growing lighter by the day. Home could be the beginnings of a smile sneaking onto Yusaku’s face when Ryoken called to him. 

All things his father would hate, surely, and Ryoken was starting to understand the beauty of that.


	2. Kink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is pushing the teen rating, tbh.

* * *

“Listen to me, Playmaker!” Revolver is yelling behind him, but Yusaku doesn’t so much as falter as he storms away. He’s too angry to even consider it.

“Wait, Yusaku!” He freezes in place. The cold, firm way Revolver says his name echoes in his ears. It’s different from  _Playmaker_ , less aggression and more expectation. Expectation that Yusaku will heed his call.

And he will. He’s always been a slave to that voice, he realizes as the anger rushes out of him. He tries to cling to the last vestiges of it, keeping him from turning back and revealing the stunned, needy look on his face. 

Revolver takes the opportunity to catch up to him, and seizes his wrist roughly. “Hear me out, Yusaku.” He demands, and Yusaku tries to turn away as Revolver steps back in front of him. Revolver doesn’t let him, so he settles for staring at the ground under their feet. This virtual reality, another of the alien off-shoots of Vrains, is cold and too bright: here, they are completely, utterly alone.

Knowing that just makes Yusaku blush redder.

For a moment, Revolver says nothing. Yusaku can feel those yellow eyes on his face, searching, and wonders what is written there for Revolver to see. 

The hand clutching his wrist tightens, and another grabs his chin and forces his face back up. “Look at me, Yusaku.” Revolver says, his voice a guttural purr, and its different from how Kusanagi and Takeru say his name. It sounds too intimate. 

Revolver is smiling, all amusement and pleasure in equal amounts. He knows he’s won this round.

* * *

“For the sake of this infiltration, you will be calling me Ryoken- _sama.”_

 _“_ Like hell.”

“It’s important that we keep our cover,  _Yusaku.”_ Yusaku glares at the emphasis Ryoken puts on his name: the possessive, demanding lilt of it. The only thing that bothers him more is that he’s still so weak to it. Ryoken, the conniving bastard, presses his advantage.  _“_ We have to maintain certain appearances, or SOL will pick us out in an instant.” Yusaku can’t say he cares about that. “It’s that, or  _Kogami-sama._  Would you really prefer that?”

Yusaku snaps. “No!” No. Not ever. Yusaku can’t think of anything more revolting. He tugs on the tie he’s attempting to wrangle around his neck, not liking how tight and stiff the suit feels. No matter how he tries, he can’t seem to get the damn thing straight. Glaring at the two ends in frustration, he sighs. “Can’t someone else go with you?”

“We already talked about this. Nobody else is psychically linked with the network. You’re the only one who will be able to lead us to what we’re looking for.” Ryoken reminds him. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.” Ryoken slips the tie from his hands and brings it around his upturned collar, and uses it to draw them together. He fold the ends over each other gracefully, and Yusaku watches the elegant slopes of his hands, trying to ignore the heat he can feel emanating from Ryoken’s skin.

“Says the guy who gets to be called  _Ryoken-sama_ all evening.” Yusaku grumbles sarcastically. Yusaku doesn’t think there’s ever been a function or event he wanted to participate in  _less._ He can already imagine the crowds of older, sophisticated men and women with greedy eyes and sneering mouths, the noise of buzzing lies and flattery, the too expensive food that’s too complicated for his stomach.

Hell, essentially. Particularly if he had to fawn over Ryoken for all four hours, watching him get increasingly smug with having Playmaker at his beck and call. 

He’s so busy dreading the rest of the evening that it takes a moment for him to recognize that Ryoken’s hands have gone still. 

“What?” Yusaku asks, glancing up at Ryoken’s face, only to be met by a startled look of ravenous hunger. 

Oh. 

_Oh._

_“_ Ryoken-sama?” Yusaku says again, just to test the waters. It rubs him the wrong way, the subservient way it sounds, but the way color fills Ryoken’s cheeks is a little interesting. Ryoken is gripping the tie too tightly now, unconsciously bringing their faces closer together. There’s a hazy sort of intent in his eyes as their breaths mingle together. 

As nice as that is, dread settles in Yusaku’s stomach like an anchor dragging him down, because there’s no way Ryoken is  _ever_ letting the honorific go now. 


	3. Revolver

“Takeru.” He turns away from the display he was looking at when he hears Yusaku’s voice. “Take a picture of me with this.” Yusaku is holding an intricately crafted model hand-gun: some kind of revolver, Takeru thinks, and holding out his phone like it’s an alien object.

Takeru takes the phone with a bemused smile, looking between the faux-weapon and Yusaku’s unusually interested expression. It’s not often Yusaku shows interest in anything. “I didn’t realize you were into model guns.”

Yusaku strikes a pose, pointing the gun directly at the camera. Something about the pose is familiar, like Takeru has seen it in some duel footage. He just can’t seem to remember. 

The picture turns out great, and Yusaku accepts back his phone with a rare smile. “I would like to add filters. Or stickers. Do you know how?”

“Yeah, I think so?” Kiku showed him once. It’s not often he has the leg-up on Yusaku on something technological. They go through a couple edits, and Yusaku applies an absurdly silly number of stickers to the picture, his face bafflingly serious as he deliberates over with ones to use and where to place them. Finally satisfied, he nods very sternly at his phone. 

“Are you going to add a caption?” Takeru asks, completely mystified. 

“Yes.” Yusaku says firmly, already typing. Takeru glances over his shoulder, and blinks at what he sees there. 

 _‘I have ascended beyond the boundaries of human intellect’_?

“Um, will the person this is for get it?” It’s cute to see the notoriously misanthropic Yusaku trying to be social, but Takeru’s getting a little worried that whatever this is is going to fall flat. He certainly doesn’t get it. 

“Yes. He most certainly will.” Yusaku selects a contact and hits send with an expression that can only be called devious. “He will be absolutely furious.”


	4. Datastorm(shipping)

“What’s this?” 

“Don’t open that—!” Ryoken orders, but it’s too late. He’s already clicked it. A video opens on Ryoken’s laptop, and Yusaku squints at the two avatars in it. 

“Is that us? What are they doing—”

Suddenly his vision goes black, Ryoken’s hands clamped over his eyes. The sounds coming from the computer sound increasingly suspicious. And dirty.   
Yusaku imagines Ryoken wants very much to close the laptop, but both his hands are still planted on Yusaku’s face. 

“Um…”

“You shut up. You shut up right now.” Yusaku can’t tell if Ryoken’s talking to him, or the laptop. In the video, someone moans loudly, and the not-Revolver is saying some very filthy things. And is that other, breathy voice supposed to be his? Is that what he sounds like?

There’s a very loud, alarming clattering sound and the whine of something electronic dying. Ryoken finally releases him, and Yusaku finds himself blinking at the spot the table used to be. It’s now on its side, a meter away, and everything on it is now scattered across the floor.

“Did you kick the table?” Ryoken is looking very pink in the face, and he scowls at Yusaku like Yusaku’s gone and foiled another ingenious evil scheme.

“Shut up.”

“Why was that saved to your computer?” Ryoken makes a sound akin to a dying dog. 


	5. Deletion

The form on the bed looks too small, too delicate. It couldn’t possibly be Ryoken, who is always standing up straight and whose presence can fill even the emptiest of rooms. Against the white sheets, his skin and hair are pale as the moonlight, and his chest rises and falls so weakly it may as well not be moving at all.

The only hint of color is the splash of red on his hand, carefully folded over his chest. Yusaku reaches out to touch it, gently, and then flinches away when he feels the texture of his skin. Ryoken feels dead, and cold. 

“SOL did this?” Yusaku hears his own voice say. It barely rises over the roaring in his ears. 

“Yes,” Spectre is more ghostly than ever, hovering by his master’s bedside with bruises under his eyes and a weight on his shoulders. “It’s the same virus they used on his father.”

Yusaku’s hands are shaking. He clenches his fists until they still. Spectre continues, “we’re trying to reconstruct his mind in the network, but—” Spectre’s voice cracks. Yusaku’s whole body is shaking now, trembling as he reaches for Ryoken’s hand again. This time he does not flinch away. “But with just two of us left, it’s not easy. They’re hunting us like dogs.” 

You deserve this, Yusaku thinks but doesn’t say. His vision in blurry, too blurry to properly look at what’s left of Ryoken anymore. This is justice, maybe. A fate every single member of Hanoi earned.

But Yusaku has never been good at accepting what others call justice. 

He squeezes Ryoken’s hand once, and then lets him go. “Don’t worry about SOL. Just focus on Ryoken.”

Spectre sniffles, like a child. Like they all used to. Yusaku realizes he hasn’t so much as shed a tear. “What are you going to do?”

Yusaku doesn’t bother to reply, and instead leans down to whisper in Ryoken’s ear. His body is hard and unmoving under his hands. “Three reasons. Think of three reasons, and I know you’ll pull through.”

SOL will pay for this.


	6. Soulmate

It was not often someone found a way to DM his VRAINS account, with how carefully he has buried it. Most of the messages he received were from Kusanagi or Takeru, or occasionally, were one of Ai’s pranks.

This new one seemed to be most likely that latter. _‘Playmaker,’_ it read, ‘ _you disappoint me.’_

Yusaku raised an eyebrow and deleted it. But the next came almost immediately: ‘ _Are your standards truly set so low? Pathetic.’_

The username was a mess of letters and numbers; like a bot, but Yusaku wasn’t sure what kind of bot would send such bizarrely aggressive messages. A throw-away account of some kind?

 **Whoever you are, I’m not interested.** He typed, not quite sure if sending a reply was a good idea. He was confident his security wouldn’t be cracked, but something about the situation gave him a strange feeling.

_That’s not what you said last time. Have you moved on already?_

Last time?

_‘He’s not even good looking.’_

If the first message hadn’t been so directly addressed to him, he would think this is some sort of account number mixup.

_‘*Not even a good duelist. Autocorrect. Scum like that, your soulmate?’_

Yusaku stared at his screen with wide-eyes. He knew of only one instance of someone being declared his soulmate, and the memory made him wrinkle his nose. Of course Naoki’s big mouth was causing him trouble again.

But alarm coursed through Yusaku’s veins. That was a private, real-life conversation. No one else should have known about it.

_‘What happened to the ‘new path’ we were going to make together?’_

**‘Revolver?’** Yusaku typed as he read the message over and over again, but the words don’t change. His heartbeat picked up pace.

_'Is this some sort of weird rebound thing?'_

**‘How do you know about that?’**

_‘You wanted me to know, didn’t you? You’re trying to make me jealous.’_

The conversation was very quickly spiraling out of control—though to insinuate that it had ever been  _in_ control was too generous. Yusaku typed a denial, then deleted it, realizing he just sounded defensive. And he had nothing to feel defensive about.

Revolver, however, must have taken his silence for admission. _‘That’s it, isn’t it? A clever little ploy to get under my skin?’_

 **‘You misunderstand.’** Yusaku wrote quickly. He had no idea where to even begin explaining it. Or why he even had to. Why did Ryoken care about Naoki saying something so ridiculous?

 _‘Are you that pathetically lonely? How cute.’_ Yusaku glared at his screen and the little words printed there.  _That_  was certainly something he was actually defensive about.

_‘If you are, I can fix that for you. OMW.’_

Yusaku read the last message again. And again. And once more, to make it three. 

 _Thank you, Naoki,_  he thought as he went to unlock his door.  _Thank you so much._


	7. Hair

“I want you,” Dr. Genome says very deliberately, “to retrieve some of Playmaker’s DNA for me.”

Ryoken tries very hard to not react, but he can feel a flush itching up his neck. Playmaker’s ‘DNA’ is not something he should think about in the yacht’s main cabin, surrounded by his subordinates. “Absolutely not.”

Spectre is waggling his eyebrows energetically to his left. Ryoken didn’t realize eyebrows were capable of contorting like that, but Spectre is pushing the limits of reality with how high his brow is lifting.

“I’ll do it myself if I must.” Dr. Genome sighs, but there’s a nasty grin still lurking on his face. 

Ryoken very nearly chokes on his tongue in his haste: “No. Again, absolutely not.”

“I’m not asking for anything… _complicated.”_ Dr. Genome places such heavy, and ironic, emphasis on the word that Spectre’s eyebrow acrobatics increase tenfold. Ryoken offhandedly starts to wonder if he could flip the boat and drown them all if he tried. His face feels very hot. “Just a lock of hair will do. Or, if you’re feeling ambitious, a bit of saliva?” Ryoken is pretty sure the temperature of his cheeks right now could burn a hole through the deck. He wishes it would. “Surely, you could get it if you tried.”

Ryoken buries his head in his hands and tries desperately not to think about that: all the ways he could hypothetically get Yusaku’s saliva. Or hair. Or his–

He fails. 


	8. Proposal

When he wakes up, it’s all gone—Ai, his Cyberse cards, the Playmaker account. Like they never existed at all, and he’s left gasping for breath in an unfamiliar room, an unfamiliar bed. But he would recognize that ocean, those cliffs, those stars outside the window anywhere.

Their absence is a gaping maw in his perception, jolting and horrifying like missing a step on a stairwell in the dark: he knows something should be there, in the network, but the realization that there _isn’t_ leaves him reeling.

Yusaku clutches at the strange sheets, and they are soft and smooth under his fingers—alien and unpleasant for all their finery. His hands shake, and he wants to tear at the bedding, wants to scream, wants to shatter something.

As if breaking something could keep him together.

“You’re awake.” The voice is soft in a way it never has been before, but the familiar firm coldness stills sits solid underneath. Yusaku does not look up at the doorway and the man standing there.

He struggles to form words. There’s so much he wants to say, to yell, but his throat seems to be closing in on itself, constricting until he thinks he might be choking on his own tongue. Against the rising pressure in his chest, he can only force out a single one: “Why?”

Ryoken is quiet for a moment, but Yusaku can feel the burn of his presence like an itch against his skin. He hears Ryoken take a deep breath and release it, and his footsteps as he enters the room. Each step closer has Yusaku’s skin prickling.

The bed dips with Ryoken’s weight on its edge, and a hand, marked by a red tattoo that makes revulsion rise in Yusaku’s gut, reaches over the covers towards him. He pushes back and away from it, and Ryoken pulls away.

“I don’t really know what you’re asking.” Ryoken admits, not acknowledging the silent rejection. “If you’re asking why you’re here, I retrieved your body from Kusanagi.” Had Kusanagi handed him over without a fight? Considering what happened, he probably did. Yusaku didn’t know whether to feel betrayed or hurt. He mostly just felt _raw._ “Do you remember what happened?”

Yusaku does. Remembering hurts, _burns_ as he recalls standing still and numb and disbelieving as his lifepoints hit zero _._ Knowing he alone lived through it, knowing Ryoken _got_ him to live through it, hurts even more. This is not how he wanted to be saved.

He is so sick of being the only one to be saved.

“I should be dead.” He had felt his own death before it even happened, feeling his own consciousness being swallowed and erased by the network. “You somehow retrieved my data. You could have—” His voice breaks. “You could have—the Ignis. The Cyberse.”

“We barely managed to salvage _you_ , let alone the rest.”

“ _Liar._ ” Yusaku hisses, as his eyes burn. He can’t bear to look at Ryoken, but he can’t seem to make his vision focus on his hands either. Everything is blurry.

Ai had been scared—Ai had been so _scared,_ but he had been brave too. _“Hey, Playmaker,”_ Ai had asked, “ _what were you wishing for when you made me?”_

Yusaku hadn’t been able to find the strength to answer, then, watching his legs crumble into little red flecks of light. Hadn’t been able to push out the answer while he still had a tongue to speak with.

Ai had accepted his impending deletion like his death had always been inevitable, up until the red crept up Yusaku’s soles. Ai had been shaking, quaking, screaming then—his moment of calm passing the second he registered that Yusaku was dying too.

Something hot and wet drips down his face, and it takes a moment for Yusaku to realize he’s crying. Ryoken is much closer, suddenly, a firm and solid presence pressing into his side. There’s a hand curling gently around his neck and another on his face, thumbing away tears. Yusaku can feel himself shaking apart in Ryoken’s arms, knows he’s quivering against Ryoken’s lips as they press against his temple.

“Shh,” Ryoken shushes him, but Yusaku can barely breath around the sobs rising in his chest. “It’s over. It’s all over.”

And it is. In some ways, that is the worst part. Because Yusaku had never thought he’d have to live with any sort of _over,_ an after so ultimate and hopeless.

He wasn’t supposed to fail. And he wasn’t supposed to have to live with failure either. But now he has no choice. Ryoken had taken that decision out of his hands.

Resentment coils inside him, aged and familiar. He knows the feeling well, but it’s never been directed at this person before. It makes him feel like a child, trapped and alone with nothing but a voice in his ear all over again.

 _“_ Why only me? Why don’t you ever, _ever_ save someone else?”

_You could have saved him._

Ryoken makes a noise in the back of his throat, but Yusaku can’t place it. The hand on his throat slips down and entwines its fingers between his own.

There’s ring on his finger. Yusaku notices it very suddenly, but it's silver and sparkling and as dazzling as the wondrous sea outside the window. Ryoken traces his fingers over it, the warmth of his skin like fire against Yusaku’s knuckles.

It’s a silent answer he doesn’t expect.

And Yusaku hates it, _hates it_ and everything it represents—but most of all he hates how much he wants it, how it makes his heart swell and his tears abate.

 _Love._ He never got to tell Ai that, his own answer. _I wanted someone to love me._

_I just didn’t think it would hurt this much._


	9. not quite the definition of online dating, part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ficlet is gonna come in parts, but I haven't decided how many there will be yet haha

It feels like static creeping across his skin—charged goose-flesh and the burning itch of being watched. Like someone is here, in the truck, which shouldn’t be possible. Yusaku glances up from the monitor, and finds Revolver looking back.

Not Ryoken.  _Revolver,_  the avatar, dressed in white with pale hair and piercing eyes. He’s watching Yusaku, that much is clear, but when Yusaku jolts from his seat and takes three steps back, he doesn’t react at all. Just stares stonily on. The edges of the room are flickering all around him, the familiar pixels and lines of the network cutting through reality.

Yusaku remembers the first time he saw Revolver, soaring over the city as Vrains consumed the sky, and realizes he’s seeing into the network.  
“Something wrong, Yusaku?” Kusanagi asks, looking back at him from the grill, looking straight through Revolver because Revolver  _isn’t there._  
 _Yes,_  Yusaku nearly replies.  _We have a security breach_. But while Revolver is watching him with interest, he doesn’t seem to realize that Yusaku is reacting to him.

Revolver doesn’t know Yusaku can see him. 

“It’s nothing.” Yusaku finally says, as he retakes his seat. “I just dozed off a little.” Neither Kusanagi or their uninvited guest seem to find this suspicious, even though Yusaku is still having trouble wrenching his gaze away from Revolver’s relaxed expression. 

_Why are you here?_  Yusaku wants to ask, but he swallows the words down. There’s a foolish hope blooming in his chest, and a much more deep-seated suspicion. 

While his Link Sense interprets Revolver’s presence in the form of his avatar taking up the already crowded hall of the truck, Yusaku knows it’s nothing more than his brain struggling to makes sense of the sensory data his unnatural connection with the network brings. In truth, Revolver is probably hacking their systems from somewhere in Hanoi’s digital headquarters and watching them through some camera feed. The monitor’s, maybe?

Yusaku shivers. Knowing that doesn’t lessen his discomfort, or ease the chills racing down his back. He can feel Revolver’s attention, and it’s all he can focus on. He can’t even remember what he was working on before the sudden intrusion. 

A sharp sound fills the air, and Yusaku is flinching before it registers that it’s just Kusanagi’s phone. Kusanagi pulls it out and frown worriedly at the screen; it must be a call from the hospital about Jin.

Kusanagi glances Yusaku’s way, a question in his gaze, and Yusaku nods back and waves him out. He won’t be back for a while, they both know.

But that leaves Yusaku not quite alone. This is when he is supposed to get up and take charge of the grill, but he’s stuck to his chair, feeling heat crawl up his neck. Because he has to get changed out of his uniform. He’s not allowed to have a part-time job, and certainly not allowed to have one in uniform. And normally he would simply change in his room in the back, but  _Revolver is right there_. Still staring at him.

Yusaku resists the need to shift uncomfortably in his seat, glancing between the monitor, the grill, and his room. Technically, the monitor’s camera can’t see into the room, but there’s no guarantee that’s the breach at all. They could be bugged. 

Yusaku’s face feels like it’s burning. Revolver looks significantly more interested, which is saying something since even before he was already eying Yusaku up like Ai watches a new episode of  _The Doomed and The Digital._

He takes a deep breath and levels Revolver with his best no-nonsense glare. Which is hopefully not hindered by how hard he’s blushing. 

“Do you mind? I need to get changed.”

Revolver looks confused, and glances over his shoulder like he’s expecting someone else to be in the truck. Then he looks back at Yusaku with a dubious expression. 

“I’m talking to you, Revolver. Out, you peeping tom.”

Revolver actually  _jumps_ , his eyes wide and stunned. Then his face darkens with red, embarrassment and guilt flushing his cheeks. And he’s still staring at Yusaku, now like Yusaku is something alien and mysterious. 

“How did he—“ His eyes flicker around, probably checking monitors and controls, that Yusaku can’t see, on his end for answers. 

Yusaku feels his shoulders creeping up defensively. “I can see you.”

Revolver looks back at him, his mouth opening and closing. “He can  _see_ me?”

“Yes. Now get out.” Yusaku resists the urge to roll his eyes and frowns at Revolver all the harder. Revolver stares back with rapt fascination clear on his face.

“You can  _hear_ me, too?” That would be considered impressive, Yusaku supposes, since seeing an image of someone spying on him was one thing but hearing their voice without a microphone or speakers to carry the words across the network was another matter entirely. But Yusaku has no intentions of trying to explain it; hopefully, Revolver would chalk it up to his hacking ability. Ignoring that fact that Yusaku was clearly not hacking anything right now.

So, instead, he just raises an eyebrow and nods towards the grill he’s supposed to be manning. “Do you mind?” 

Revolver glances between Yusaku and the grill and starts blushing again. He stands there, stalled and off-kilter, until Yusaku moves to get out of his chair, and then Revolver is disappearing in a blend of static and flashing light.

Yusaku gets the feeling this isn’t the last time they’ll be meeting like this.


	10. Earrings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s a time skip of undisclosed length in the middle of this one.

 

* * *

In the wake of the Tower, the Knights of Hanoi had disbanded with a whimper as the general public gradually learned what had happened. In the end, what was once a massive organization of over a thousand people burst open at the seams and spilt its contents all over internet. There were investigations of course; journalists hunting down the wayward former members for interviews and news pieces. Late-night talk show hosts spoke mutinously about the failure of the government and Sol Technologies to foresee the threat, and for their negligence in regard to the public’s safety. A terrorist organization had almost weaponized a VR game to annihilate all network-connected devices, and in turn almost brought a fatal and unprecedented end to the technological era. 

Even overlooking the economic calamity the Tower would have wrought, and the ramifications of such a modern famine on Japan’s tech-based markets, the initial fallout would have entailed the failing of planes, cars, traffic lights, banks, power grids, archives, and so much more. 

The entire country, and many others, seethed. And then, in almost no time at all, they got over it. There were exposés of former Knights, all talking about their experiences in what had almost been the most dangerous terrorist organization in history, and even more on the duelists that rose to stand against them, and then most people let it go.

Most, not all. Because with the terror, the relief, and the horror came fascination. Some were completely entranced by what Hanoi had dared to attempt, and hailed its leader as a fallen hero, an almost martyr that tried to free them from the constraints of their Wi-Fi enabled prisons.

And that was why Revolver had merchandise now. Such was the nature of capitalism. 

It didn’t matter to Yusaku. He didn’t care. And he certainly hadn’t spent the last three minutes staring through a store’s window at the lines of Revolver plushies, unable to walk away.

Except he had.

…They were cute plushies. 

Reluctantly, he stepped inside. The store was the typical VRAINS merch retailer, with posters and duel mats and all sorts of miscellaneous fannish nonsense, but there was a corner dedicated to the Knights of Hanoi, full of white coats and masks and Revolver. Not much compared to the three entire aisles and the whole wall the Playmaker paraphernalia filled, and yet Yusaku was drawn closer all the same. 

There was even a little display of Hanoi themed jewelry and keychains, most of which Yusaku put his nose up at, until something caught his eye.

The earrings were a decent-quality reproduction of Revolver’s iconic ones: brilliant blue faux jewels hanging above dangling gold bullets. They were clip-on versions too.

Yusaku very deliberately met the cashier’s eyes as he checked out. He had nothing to feel ashamed of.

* * *

  
Moving Yusaku out of his apartment was going to be easy, they both figured, but Ryoken had volunteered to help with the task anyway. It was a one-day affair, spent primarily on figuring out how to dispose of Yusaku’s defunct and honestly worthless furniture.

“What are these?” Ryoken asked, and Yusaku looked up from the single box he was packing to see. He didn’t have much stuff to pack in the first place, and it was all pretty self-explanatory, so curiosity had him padding back over to where Ryoken was sorting through his desk drawers.

Only to freeze in place when he saw gold and blue swaying from Ryoken’s fingertips. 

“Um,” Yusaku said, putting all points of his genius-level IQ to good use. 

Ryoken inspected the jewelry with a critical eye, the corners of his mouth slowly curling up. “Not bad.” He muttered, unclamping one from its mount. His eyes found Yusaku’s, intense and inquisitive. “Have you ever worn them?”

Yusaku felt his face flush, trying and failing to not think about all the times he had. And what he had done with them on. 

Ryoken openly leered then, a dark and knowing glint in his eye. He put on the earrings with the grace of experience, fingering them slightly so they swayed in place. The gold shined against his skin, and the blue accentuated his cold, pale eyes, and Yusaku couldn’t look away if he tried. 

“It’s a good thing we haven’t gotten rid of the bed yet.” Ryoken mused. “But you should have gotten two pairs.”


	11. Cosplay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a follow-up to the previous one

Yusaku doesn’t know what this is.

Well, no, that’s not true. Yusaku knows exactly what this is, unfortunately. 

He just doesn’t know why it’s on his bed.

Eying the green and black fabric laid out on the sheets warily, Yusaku backs right back out of room, only to bump right into something solid and warm and familiar—Ryoken’s chest; Yusaku would recognize those pectorals anywhere. 

He tries to step around, but Ryoken moves with him, blocking the doorway and herding him back inside. There’s a dangerous smile on Ryoken’s face, the one Yusaku usually associates with corporate sabotage and jailbreaks and mist definitely not the monstrosity that is on the bed.

“Something wrong, Playmaker?” Ryoken prowls forward, and with each of his steps forward, Yusaku retreats back two, right until his calves are bumping against the bed-frame. Cornered but never one to back down, Yusaku plants his feet and scowls.

“Three things, actually.” He measures the distance to the door of their bedroom, and his salvation. Can he make it? “One, you’re calling me Playmaker.” Does he  _want_  to make it? Well, it’s a moot point. There was tension coiled in Ryoken’s limbs, tense and waiting to snap forward like a spring the moment Yusaku took a step in the wrong direction. “Two, you won’t let me leave the bedroom.” There is a rabid sort of anticipation in the wideness of Ryoken’s eyes, in the sharp corner of his mouth, in the way he bites his lip. Yusaku swallows, feeling a familiar heat in his cheeks and a ticklish airiness in his stomach. He uses the thought of the _thing_  on the bed to steady himself, and huffs. “And three,  _that._ ”

It’s, to be frank, a sexy Playmaker costume. The kind you find in overly specific fetish stores and see in those videos he once caught Shima watching, and while it was likely as tight as his actually suit in VRAINS, there was far, far more revealed skin. 

And it’s not in a store or a video. It’s in their house, on their furniture, right before his eyes. 

Ryoken’s gaze glides from his face to the atrocity in question, and then it drifts back, taking its time and lingering on the hollow of his throat. Yusaku shifts under those hooded eyes, and his throat goes dry as Ryoken reaches for him, his heart palpitating in his chest as fingers skim his waist. They tease the edge of his shirt and brush across his waistband, and each little touch has him shivering. He presses closer as a hand settles in the small of his back, enraptured by the lust in Ryoken’s crystal eyes. That devious smile has only broadened, framed by dusty pink lips—well, Yusaku can fix that.

Yusaku kisses him, standing on his toes to close those last damned centimeters, and Ryoken coils around him, all hard muscle and sharp edges and  _where is Ryoken’s other hand?_

“It will look so good on you.” Ryoken whispers against his lips, laying a green and black sleeve over Yusaku’s arm. “And I got something for me too.”

Four, Yusaku is screwed, because he can’t say no to that.


	12. not quite the definition of online dating, part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy unexpected tone change batman

The next time, alarmingly, is at Yusaku’s school. 

It’s a relatively ordinary day: Yusaku is dozing through another lecture in the back, by himself. He has the vague recollection of Shima running off somewhere, at some point, and is taking full advantage of the reprieve to catch up on some sleep. Somewhere between his mind a reality, a voice is echoing across the abyss, and Yusaku lets it draw him further into a washed out, open world.

And then he feels it _again:_ a burning that spreads like fire-ants scurrying over his skin, and a static screech in his head. He sits up straight in his chair, so fast it leaves him light-headed, and jerks sideways.

Revolver is seated alongside him, sideways in his seat with his legs crossed and one elbow on the desk. His gaze is probing, intense and discerning in a way that the alien yellow eyes had never been able to be. 

Yusaku feels a bit like screaming, but keeps his mouth carefully shut. It’s too much, too sudden. The truck was one thing, but this is the place where the two sides of his life aren’t supposed to cross over. This is where he’s Fujiki Yusaku: slacker, loner, nobody. 

And here is Revolver: terrorist, hacker, almost mass murderer, sitting in on his lecture like a he’s not an internationally recognized cyber-criminal.

“Alright,” Revolver says, his lips drawn in a puzzled line. “I’ll bite. How do you do it?”

Yusaku turns his eyes back to the front of the room and tries to pretend he hears nothing.

“Playmaker.” Apparently, he’s currently in Advanced Calculus. Who knew? No wonder Takeru isn’t here; he’s in a lower math class. “Playmaker.” Yusaku absent-mindedly solves the equation the teacher places on the projector and then calculates the probability that Shima will be coming back within the next two minutes and forty-five seconds. The answer is disappointingly low, so he ups it to five minutes and thirty-five seconds. Still low. Under normal circumstances, Yusaku could appreciate that. Now all he wants is for Shima to come back and sit right on Revolver’s nosy projection. “Playmaker, I know you can hear me.”

_I can’t talk to you right now._

Why Revolver would think that Yusaku would speak to him in the middle of mathematics is anyone’s guess. It’s likely that this is a test, to see if he really could locate Revolver in the network without needing to even touch a key on a keyboard. Truthfully, it’s not entirely a surprise that Revolver would be curious, considering how their last interaction went, but whatever he hopes to learn by doing this, he will be disappointed. After all, not even Yusaku has an explanation for his Link Sense, besides a few vague theories that never seem to lead him anywhere. 

Before learning the truth of the Hanoi Project, Yusaku had always assumed his bizarre, inexplicable sixth sense was a by-product of the experiments, maybe even the objective. As it turns out, it would seem Dr. Kogami had no such interests and the fact that Yusaku would come out of the nightmare with unprecedented psychic abilities was completely unaccounted for.

And so, here they are, both baffled and without answers. 

Vaguely, Yusaku wonders why Revolver is sitting this time, or rather, why his brain interprets the sensory data that way and projects an image of Revolver sitting down. He supposes its possible Revolver really is sitting this time, settled behind a row of computers and worming his way into the mediocre security system of Yusaku’s school. He’s always known that his school has heavy surveillance—it was one of the reasons he enrolled; no one would dare come after him here—but that Revolver had actually thought to hack into the school’s systems and spy on him, from the corners of lecture halls, is baffling. 

There’s a familiar aggravation in Revolver’s expression, which Yusaku recognizes is how Revolver looks when he thinks Yusaku is behaving like a stubborn little fool. It makes him kind of sad, that _that’s_ the expression he’s most used to on Ryoken’s face.

And it hurts a little more to realize that it takes discovering he’s some kind of impossible mutant to get Revolver to visit him.

Biting his lip, Yusaku forces down the swell of misery that attempts to crawl up his throat. He looks back at Revolver, who’s looking curiously around the room, and thinks: _what the hell?_ It’s not like he has any reputation worth worrying about anyway. So what if his classmates think he’s a psycho that talks to himself?

“It’s none of your business.” He finally answers, firm and sharp despite how he keeps his voice low. He doesn’t know how Revolver intends to hear him, certainly not through the surveillance cameras, but he supposes his phone’s microphone may have been hijacked. Either way, Revolver turns to look back at him with crystal-clear eyes that shine even behind the visor.

“So, he speaks.” Revolver shifts in his seat, uncrossing his legs and then re-crossing them the other way. “How can you possibly tell that I’m observing you?”

“Because it’s all you ever do. You just watch me from cameras and tell me what to do.” Yusaku doesn’t mean for it to come out as sharp and accusatory as it does. He doesn’t resent how Ryoken watched over him then, appreciates it even, but he’s upset and it’s making his words come out all harsh and cutting again. He takes a breath, and adds flatly, “are you a voyeur or something?”

He doesn’t realize Revolver’s shoulders had gone tense until he’s relaxing, eased by the joke. There’s that glower on his face again, but something else is shining in his eyes.

“You’re sensitive today.” Yusaku curls up a little in the face of the observation and turns his eyes back to the projector. It’s true, but Yusaku already knew that.

Because there are okay days and bad days and today is a bad day. Today, Yusaku’s skin burns against the table, and even his uniform is uncomfortable. Today, Yusaku can barely stand without the world spinning, and he can’t tell what temperature the room is. 

The scars hurt, too, but he doesn’t know if they actually ache or if it’s just the phantom of their agony lingering in his head. He can’t even be sure Revolver is really watching him, or if that’s just all in his head too.

Yusaku wants to believe he isn’t hallucinating this. 

Revolver is quiet after that, but he doesn’t go away, even when the bell rings and everyone else rises to go to lunch. Together, they remain sitting, and Yusaku tries to touch as little of the desk in front of him as possible. 

Normally, he would just sleep his way through the allodynia, but the idea of sleeping under Ryoken’s dutiful surveillance is just a bit too reminiscent of ten years ago for him to handle.

Affording him some mercy, Revolver doesn’t point out that Yusaku is not eating, like Shima does sometimes. Takeru usually comes to find him right about now, but there’s no sign of him either.

Maybe it’s a bad day for him too. 

Time passes in motionless silence. Yusaku is holding his body too still, feeling so brittle he thinks he might shatter at the slightest touch, but that just makes him more aware of all of Revolver’s subtle little movements: The way he keeps gradually leaning forward, like he wants to lean his elbows on his knees and stare at the floor, before straightening back up into something more appropriate for the leader of a terrorist organization. The way his mouth opens on words he wants to say, and the way is closes before they escape because he knows he shouldn’t. 

Yusaku’s head feels like a bubble trying to rise off his shoulders.

The minutes pass like this, empty but not awkward. There’s a familiarity to this too: Yusaku suffering quietly, with only a distant but devoted presence for company and support.

_Say something,_ Yusaku wants to beg. _Anything. I just need to keep hearing your voice._

Revolver finally decides to speak again.

“Has it always been like this?”

Yusaku isn’t sure what he’s referring to specifically, whether it’s the Link Sense or the nerve damage, but it probably doesn’t matter. For the two of them, it always leads back to the same answer. “No. It started back then.”

Revolver makes a noise, choked in his throat somewhere between all that interest and guilt, and then he’s gone. 

Yusaku bites his lip, curls in on himself, and tries to leave the world behind. 


	13. Alt+Delete

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't know either

“Ai, I have an idea.” The duel was coming to a close, and they were running out of time to find a way out of certain death. “These bubbles should come down when the duel ends. When that happens, I’ll distract Revolver. Use that chance to escape, got it?”

Ai peeked at him, a glimmer of hope in his round yellow eyes. “What are you going to do?”

Yusaku couldn't believe what he was about to say. He couldn’t barely believe he even thought of it. “I’m going to seduce him.”

“Okay, got it— _wait, what_?” Ai’s voice pitched up alarmingly.

"Quiet!"

"Have you gone crazy?"

"What other choice do we have?" Yusaku snapped back, and Ai went silent, his shoulders slumping.

The duel ended in a rush, with Windy escaping in a terrified flurry of digital wind and rampaging data. Lightning was gone before anyone could even blink, and the program keeping them trapped fizzled out with a soft, staticky sound.

Agitated, Revolver turned upon them with his cold eyes set on Ai, who in turn scrambled behind Yusaku's legs.

The things I do for you, Yusaku thought, taking a breath.

And then he dashed forward, flinging himself right into Revolver's arms.

"You're alright!" Revolver caught him with wide eyes, forced to take three stumbling steps back and struggling against the sudden dead weight as Yusaku clung to his shoulders.

"Pl—Playmaker?" He felt Revolver's breath on the nape of his neck and peeked back to check on Ai, who was subtly creeping away as Revolver's hands wavered uncertainty in the air.

Relieved, Yusaku buried closer into Revolver's collar. "You scared me, for a minute there," he muttered, as gloved hands settled on his shoulders. Revolver pushed him back with awkward gentleness matched by the slack surprise on his face. Yusaku let him, forcing his expression into something he hoped passed for shy.

"You—I—" Revolver seemed completely lost for words. He cleared his throat before attempting to speak again. "As if I would lose to a defective artificial intelligence." Avoiding Yusaku's gaze, he glanced over Yusaku's shoulder and his eyes went wide. "The Dark Ignis!"

"Ai?" Yusaku said, playing innocent as he also looked. "He's gone!" Ai wasn't actually. Yusaku could see him lurking in the shadows of a pillar well away from them, waiting for a chance to slip out of the room entirely.

"Damn it!" Revolver hissed, shoving past Yusaku. "I won't let it escape."

Heart pounding in his chest—Revolver could spot Ai if he looked any further left—Yusaku caught the trailing edge of Revolver's jacket and tugged him back. Revolver whirled back around with a baffled, frustrated expression that shuddered when he met Yusaku's pleading eyes.

“You’re leaving already?” Yusaku hid behind his hand bashfully and peeked at Revolver from under his eyelashes. “I haven’t even gotten the chance to thank you yet.”

Revolver, for all intents and purposes, seemed to short-circuit. Yusaku could imagine the circles on his mask spinning like a loading icon. Hoping it wasn’t too much, Yusaku traced his bottom lip with a finger and tilted his chin up coyly, leaning just a couple centimeters closer.

Revolver visibly swallowed. “I have to—uh…” Revolver’s voice trailed off as Yusaku reached out and took his hand, gently brushing their fingers together as he trailed up to Revolver’s wrist.

“Don’t go.” Yusaku resisted the instinct to say it firmly, and forced his voice into something softer, poutier. He trailed further up Revolver’s arm and dared to step in closer, until they were almost pressed together. He drew Revolver’s arm to his waist and it settled tentatively on his hip, frozen.

“The Ignis—” Revolver began again, but his eyes were roving in all directions, from Yusaku’s hand to his hips to his lips and his eyes.

Yusaku stared back at him, struggling to keep the humiliation from his face. At least he didn’t have to try and fake embarrassment; he was sure his cheeks were already bright red. Revolver looked confused and uncertain, and Yusaku almost missed the devious look of triumph that had been painted on his sharp features as he tore apart the last of Windy's lifepoints. The new avatar was more expressive, more human, and there wasn’t a full pane of glass in between them anymore.

Yusaku pushed up on his toes and went for the kiss—the kill. The kill.

Only to meet a gloved hand, which clamped over his face in a vice grip. The other hand seized his waist and jerked him closer roughly.

Revolver’s gaze was suddenly sharp, realization clear across his features as they darkened with anger. “You’re trying to distract me.” He hissed into the few centimeters that separated them, nails digging into Yusaku's cheeks through his gloves.

 _Screw it._  Yusaku grabbed Revolver’s wrist in one hand and seized the front of his shirt in the other. Spinning on his heel, he dragged the unbalanced cyber terrorist with him and then over him in the cleanest shoulder toss he’d ever done.


	14. Jacket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ll fix the formatting on this one later.

 They find Yusaku’s jacket first, marked with dirt and with a torn sleeve in the middle of the alley. Ryoken’s heart nearly stops when he sees it, but he only pauses for a moment. He’s been running since they ditched the car in traffic blocks ago, but the sight of the discarded garment has him sprinting even faster.

Then, they find them at the end of the alley: a group of men in nondescript suits forcing a struggling teen into an unmarked car. This barely even registers, because Ryoken is in the thick of them so fast. He drags a man off of Yusaku by the back of the collar and throws himself in between them. Two others still have Yusaku by the arms, but he’s kicking and thrashing enough to escape the trunk they were trying to shove him into. Somewhere in the mess he can hear Faust yelling about having called the police (a lie) and unfamiliar voices cursing. The suits are looking worse for wear, many of their faces dark with bruises and scratches.

Yusaku had been giving them hell, clearly. The thought of it almost makes Ryoken smile, but he’s too busy punching one of them in the sunglasses. The car peels away with screeching tires, and the thugs scatter in all directions. Ryoken’s breathing too hard to even consider pursuit, but Yusaku is collapsed behind him and not trapped in a moving vehicle, so at the very least he can call this a victory.

But looking at Yusaku, it doesn’t seem like one. He’s on his knees, shaking, and his chest is rising and falling so quickly that for a moment Ryoken thinks he’s hyperventilating. He’s not, but it’s of little comfort when Ryoken takes in the sight of him. He’s battered and bruised, his hair nearly unrecognizable in its disarray, and his dress shirt is torn at almost every seam. Even more telling is the size of his eyes, wide and glassy like a doll’s.

Ryoken drops down to the concrete, and Yusaku flinches at the sudden movement, scrambling away on torn up hands. His fingers are scraped raw and his nails are broken, bleeding on to the asphalt.

The last time Ryoken was this angry, he formed a terrorist organization. But he swallows down the rage, for now—he will use it, later, with merciless efficiency—and tries to catch Yusaku’s empty gaze.

“It’s just me.” He says, but there’s no response. Ryoken bites the inside of his lip and hazards a look up.

Faust is watching them from some ways away, glancing around to make sure no one has come back. There’s no sign of any returning thugs, but Ryoken knows it’s only a matter of time. They have to get out of here.  

He reaches for Yusaku again, fully intending to just pick him up, but a bloody hand swipes at him. He catches it, wincing when he sees the damage up close, and doesn’t let go even as Yusaku jerks violently in his grip.

“Hey, you.”

This time, the reaction is immediate. Yusaku goes still, even the bird-like fluttering of his chest, and while his hand is still tense in Ryoken’s grip, the struggling ends. Green eyes peer at him from behind muddled pink and blue bangs, and for the first time, Yusaku seems to actually recognize him.

The tension leaks out of him in a startling rush, but that same tension was apparently the only thing still keeping him upright. Ryoken catches him by the shoulders as he folds inwards. He hides his face in Ryoken’s shirt, but it’s too late. Still, Ryoken tries to pretend he didn’t see how wet Yusaku’s eyes looked.

“What’s going on?” Yusaku’s voice in uncharacteristically weak, hoarse. He must have been yelling the whole time, and now he’s left muttering against Ryoken’s collar. “I was walking home and suddenly they tried to—” His voice is quavering, close to breaking. “D—do they know?”

“They aren’t after Playmaker. It seems they’re after the six victims. We’re—” Going to stop them. Protect the kids they once broke, nearly killed. “—looking into it.” They have no right to play the good guys here. They were just as, if not more, guilty.

“Takeru.” Yusaku says, fear creeping into the name. A hand tentatively gripped the front of Ryoken’s shirt. “I have to—”

“I already have someone keeping an eye on him. If they try anything, we’ll know.” Hopefully, Dr. Genome would survive the experience. Homura Takeru was more dangerous than he looked. “ _We_ need to get you somewhere safe.” 

“Kusanagi-san—“ 

“Isn’t an option. He’s the brother of one of their targets.” On paper, Kusanagi Jin probably sounds like a difficult mark. He’s locked away in a secure facility surrounded by caretakers. Yusaku, on the other hand, probably seems easy, maybe even ideal: a high schooler living on his own with no friends or family. Whoever is behind this clearly has no idea who they were dealing with. “You’re coming home with me.”

He expects Yusaku to argue. Instead, Yusaku just clings tighter, and Ryoken fights back another surge of rage, rushing through him like a crashing wave. Yusaku is still shaking, his shirt hanging off him in scraps and strips, and he feels too cold in Ryoken’s hands for someone that was just fighting for his life.

“He’s in shock.” Apparently thinking along the same lines, Faust’s voice cuts in from where he’s standing guard. “We need to get him out of here, and preferably into something warm. His core temperature is probably dropping.”

Ryoken is shrugging off his blazer before Faust is even finished, and wraps it around Yusaku’s shoulders. It’s a meagre offering, considering everything that has happened: not nearly warm enough, and at least two sizes too big. But Yusaku accepts it, pulling the jacket closer as Ryoken gets up and extends a hand.  

Yusaku stares at it for a long moment. Whatever weakness Ryoken saw before is long faded, painted over with a familiar blankness. For a moment, he thinks Yusaku is going to be stubborn and insist on handling whatever this is on his own. That answer would be unacceptable, but Ryoken would prefer to _not_ have to be responsible for the second kidnapping attempt of the day.  

But a bloody hand takes his, and Yusaku struggles back onto his feet.

“Let’s go.” 


	15. Dance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT NOTE: This one takes place between Ryoken discovering Playmaker’s identity and the launch of the Tower of Hanoi. I’m making the assumption that Ryoken knows that Playmaker was Unknown first. Keep those things in mind while reading!

There were, occasionally, times when SOL Tech went all out. Though the special events had been declining over the years, as Data Material dwindled and grew more unmanageable, Playmaker’s capture of the Ignis had revived some of the older RPG elements that had been phased out over time.

An effort to lure him out, no doubt.

For the most part, the Valentine’s event had been chocolates and kiss emotes and spruced up VR date spots, but everyone knew the main event launched at the eve of the 14th. The ball was the quintessence of fairytales, taking place in a castle of crystal and glass. The avatar algorithm had been adjusted to automatically adapt every outfit into more appropriate attire, with increasing glamor and glitz according to one’s duel record.

As Unknown, Yusaku slipped through the crowds mostly unhindered—since the advent of the Playmaker account, Unknown had been gathering dust, but its duel record was still pristine. As a result, the get-up SOL had stuck him in was a bit _flashier_ than most, but he was confident it would blend easier than whatever Playmaker’s top-of-the-charts ranking would earn. At the very least, the get-up was mostly black, with the exception of the turquoise waistcoat, the crimson lining of the tailcoat, and the rather obnoxious knee-high boots.

His interest in the event itself was rather limited. From what he understood, it was mostly a glorified masquerade dance: an opportunity for fans to have the night of a life-time with their favorite Charisma Duelist. It sounded terribly cliché, but what caught his attention were the implications, as VRAINS’s servers would be reaching their maximum capacity, and therefore would be at their most vulnerable, Yusaku knew.

If and when the Knights of Hanoi struck, Yusaku would be ready. Until then, the only thing he could do was stay vigilant as he wove through the masses lurking along the edges of the shimmering dance-floor, which could only be entered alongside a chosen partner. Already the center of the immense venue was filled with swirling couples, spinning in circles in time with the gentle background music.

In the corner of his eye, he caught sight of something white, and turned slowly for a better look. Instead of a Hanoi coat like he expected, he found himself watching a player with silvery hair that shined under the ethereal light. Something about the style was familiar, itching at some distant recollection Yusaku hesitated to touch.

A young man stood meters away with his back against the wall, his broad shoulders accentuated by a tailored suit of dark blue and silver, cut through with glittering purple.

He looked like the night sky, and for some reason, Yusaku couldn’t tear his eyes away.

The stranger’s eyes were obscured by a dark, glittering mask, but Yusaku couldn’t shake the feeling that he was staring right back.

He swallowed and tried to blend back in with the crowd. It was not the time to be drawing attention to himself, but he couldn’t shake the whisper of possibility calling him back for one quick glance.

But the stranger was gone.

“Feeling shy?” A voice spoke into his ear, a line of heat pressed against his back. Yusaku jerked away instinctively, spinning around only to find himself nose to nose with the same pale-haired man. The stranger let him go, a teasing smile on his lips.

“Excuse me.” Yusaku said flatly, fully intending to just walk away. But he stayed in place, lingering.

“You look like you want a dance.” The stranger extended a hand expectantly. Yusaku looked at it, a strange temptation that he didn’t understand wrapped in a white glove. He bit the inside of his lip and _wondered._ Why he was stalling in place, why he felt like it he turned away he would miss something important, why the light on the man’s hair made him think of sunsets and the terror of the unknown.

“I don’t dance.”

“Neither does anybody else on that floor. A dancing event for duelists? Come on.” The stranger had a jaunty way of talking, of gesturing. But Yusaku saw the boredom and disappointment lingering in down-turned corners of the man’s mouth, in the way his hand-motions lagged. This person wasn’t who he was pretending to be; broiling under his virtual skin like a bottled hurricane.

And maybe that realization showed on Yusaku’s face. Maybe the stranger could see in his eyes that he had perceived something he shouldn’t have. “Three reasons,” he said suddenly, and Yusaku went rigid, the world falling away under his feet, “to dance with me.”

“One, you’re bored.” _Am I dreaming?_ “Two, I’m bored.” _Is it really you?_ The hair. The speech pattern. The way he reached forward and guided Yusaku along like he’d always known how. It couldn’t be a coincidence. “Three, we’ll never meet again.” _No, no, no—you’re finally here—you’re finally here._ “So, why not?”

The not-stranger’s hand felt warm around his wrist, and Yusaku’s eyes were on his straight back, on the light in his hair, on the way the crowd seemed to just part before his every step.

The desperate edge to his voice that left Yusaku’s mouth dry with an unfamiliar fear. “Come on, I don’t have long.”

He was led to the dance-floor by a hand, too stunned to speak. He kept trying to find words to say, but they slipped through his fingers even as the man tangled theirs together. The other hand guided his free one to the man’s broad shoulder before settling on the curve of his waist. When the man moved, Yusaku moved. His mind felt like it was racing a kilometer a second, but at the same time it was completely blank.

_Am I dreaming?_

_Where are you now?_

_Are you safe?_

_Did you get out?_

_Do you remember me?_

The music was louder here, rising through the floor and making Yusaku’s heart pound. The world beyond them was spinning, nothing but the vague notion of light and dark. They moved in tandem, step by step, like they’d had this dance a thousand times, in dreams on the brink of being nightmares, in wishes that couldn’t come true. An incomprehensible swell of emotions rose in Yusaku’s chest as the man shifted them closer, suffocating him.

Yusaku couldn’t remember how to breath. He could only swing and sway by direction, following fluidly in the man’s footsteps. The hands on him were gripping too tightly, like they were afraid of being gentle.

_Do you have any idea who I am?_

Yusaku looked nothing like himself. He didn’t even look like Playmaker. He regretted that decision, suddenly. He wanted to open his mouth, wanted everything to spill out his lips and into the air between them.

_Wait._

The man leaned forward, his ivory hair hanging over the gleaming dark mask like a halo as he lingered over Yusaku, an incomprehensible frustration written in his every edge. Somewhere behind that mask, eyes were boring into his own. “Don’t say anything.”

_Wait._

He could feel warm breath on his face, like heat seeping into his skin he was stepping into the sun. _“_ Please just let me have this night.”

_Wait._

“And when it’s over, you should log out.”

 _Wait. Don’t—_ Yusaku swallowed the words back down, and clutched at the man just as tightly. It would too little too late, because even as he gripped the man’s hand in his own, the person he’d been searching for all along was slipping through the cracks between them. Instead he closed his eyes and let the man lead him in circles, let himself be tilted back in the time with the music. Let the fear and desperation slip away, and just for a night, decided to live this fantasy.

And when it was over, he would find a way to make it real.


	16. not quite the definition of online dating, part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im living for casual canon datastorm hangouts

Yusaku doesn’t spend much time in his apartment. When he’s not at school, he’s in Kusanagi’s truck. But the early autumn cold season has turned him into a walking health code violation, and he’s henceforth been exiled from Café Nagi until he stops hacking up a lung every half an hour. Out of sheer petty rebellion, he leaves Ai behind to harass Kusanagi to death.

He’s under strict orders to _not_ work on anything, under threat of his laptop being confiscated and left in Takeru’s disaster-prone hands, so he’s left watching bad soap operas with Roboppy. Or rather, desperately trying to tune out the awful atrocities playing across the screen.

 “Oh no, oh no,” Roboppy seems devastated by the most recent turn of events, hiding her screen in her pink mitts. On screen, some foreign lady with make-shift metal parts is dramatically confessing her unplanned, and apparently inconvenient, pregnancy to her lover.

Yusaku wonders what he did in a past life to deserve this one, and yet he keeps watching. He’s pretty sure the lady is a robot, but he’s not quite sure how the whole _pregnant_ thing works around that.

His skin crawls, and there’s an echo of static in his ears. The sound quality of this show is really bad, apparently.

“What is _this?_ ”

Yusaku freezes.

Revolver is next to him, sitting on the bed and glowering at the TV screen.

“The Doomed and the Digital,” Yusaku says dully, because he doesn’t quite understand how Ryoken is here, in his supposedly secure and unmonitored apartment. He suddenly feels very uncomfortable. “Why are you here? Isn’t the network being monitored?”

Yusaku honestly hadn’t expected any more bizarre encounters with Revolver—he saw Ryoken face-to-face just a couple of days ago, when Ryoken called him over to update him on both SOL and the Ignis. Ryoken hadn’t brought up his Link Sense at all then, so Yusaku had tentatively hoped that between the declaration of war and the death of an Ignis the matter had been forgotten.

“You weren’t at Café Nagi.” Revolver replies, shifting in his makeshift seat.

“I’m sick.” An exaggeration, really: he has a slight cough and a runny nose. But the longer he stays sick, the greater the risk of someone attacking while he’s under the weather. Kusanagi insists that he rests for a bit and gets better before anyone can take advantage. “Since you’re here, you can help me get through season three.” There's something satisfying about the idea of making Revolver, international terrorist and self-declared savior of humanity, sit through thirteen episodes of the worst piece of science-fiction humanity has ever produced. Just a single episode could probably justify Lightning's doomsday plan.

“I don’t have time to waste on such nonsense.” _But you have time to stalk me through video cameras and security feeds,_ Yusaku doesn’t say. He’s very aware of the fact that had Ryoken actually shown up at the truck, Kusanagi would have texted him.

As if sensing Yusaku’s dubious thoughts, Revolver shifts again, this time more awkwardly. There’s something he clearly came to say, but he ruminates on it for a long while. He gets up and wanders around the room as he does, and Yusaku gives up on trying to figure out what could possibly cause his brain to interpret Revolver’s presence like this. In the meantime, Yusaku reluctantly turns his gaze back to the dramatic train wreck on screen.

“ _I’m sorry, Elena.”_ An elegant but unrealistically young professor says, “ _but an AI and a human could never be together.”_

“Spectre has—can—” Revolver suddenly says, but seems to be at a loss of how to describe the bizarre entity that is Spectre . He gives up. “—too.”

Yusaku knows that. While the story Spectre had told him was farfetched, Yusaku never once thought Spectre was making it up or just messing with him. In fact, he thought the exact opposite: in that moment, Spectre was being terribly honest.

The two of them are very different, but in just as many ways, they are the same.

“I don’t know if they’re related.” Revolver continues. “The timeframes don’t line up. But it doesn’t seem like it could be a coincidence.” Though Yusaku’s not particularly eager to have this conversation, he supposes it can’t be more painful than watching the camera unsubtly zoom in on Elena’s robotic cleavage. “Do Homura Takeru or Kusanagi Jin have anything similar?”

“I don’t know.” Yusaku admits, and then turns the TV off. Since this is apparently happening, he might as well commit. Roboppy seems terribly disappointed, but wisely doesn’t point out her master is muttering to himself in an empty room as she returns to her chores. “I’ve never talked about it with anyone except Ai. Kusanagi-san has a bit of an idea about it, but I don’t think he really gets it.” Even if Jin had some sort of ability, it would be hard to tell. Takeru hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort, and he tends to be quite honest and open.

But at the same time, what are the chances that Kogami just happened to kidnap _two_ abnormalities in a city filled with comparatively normal kids?

Ryoken is watching him, now that he’s apparently run out of other things to look at in Yusaku’s rundown, crummy excuse of an apartment. He feels a little awkward having his savior in his shithole, especially after visiting Ryoken’s immense seaside mansion, but he supposes Ryoken has seen him in worse places. Even if his apartment looks like it’s a poorly renovated broom-closet, it was still leagues above the cell Kogami kept him in.

“What’s so interesting about watching me like this anyway?” Yusaku asks, genuinely curious. “You’re just watching camera feeds. The points of view must be terrible.” He still hasn’t found the camera Ryoken is watching him through right now. His TV shouldn’t have one built in, and neither should Roboppy. “Aren’t there times you just end up staring at the back of my head from the other side of the room?”

Revolver inclines his head, light gleaming off the glass visor of his helmet, and doesn't answer. Instead, he asks, “How do you see me?”

Yusaku isn’t sure whether he means the method, or if he’s asking what Yusaku sees. He decides to answer for both. “I don’t know. You’re just standing or sitting there, like you’re in the room with me.”

“Fascinating.” Revolver mutters, a gloved hand rising to cup his chin contemplatively. “I would love to study it.”

Yusaku doesn’t like the way he says that, like he’s talking about a physical phenomenon or a statistical anomaly. It reminds him that this person was raised by scientists with no boundaries: scientists that got so caught up in their fascination with technology and the power it promised humanity that they overlooked the suffering of children for months on end.

He doesn’t realize he’s backing away until he’s already taken three steps back. He doesn’t even know when he got off the bed. Revolver stares at him, face betraying nothing besides the slight, disturbed widening of his eyes. He looks paler, but more glaring is the tension in his shoulders, the bobbing of his throat.

Yusaku feels a rush of shame.

“I would never—” Ryoken says quickly.

“I didn’t mean—" Yusaku is interrupting just as fast, and they stare at each other from across the room, guiltily. Ryoken lets him finish first. “Sorry. That was just—just instinctual.”

“You don’t need to apologize. I shouldn’t have said that. It was—” The two of them exchanged cutting words all the time, but there were places they didn’t go. “—thoughtless of me.”

Yusaku steps forward.

“Where are you going?” Revolver asks, fiercely, like he thinks he is driving Yusaku out of his own apartment and is getting defensive about it.

Yusaku stops directly in front of Revolver, staring into his face. The avatar looks so tangible and solid, it’s easy to forget it’s nothing more than an image placed by Yusaku’s mind. It’s even easier to forget that Ryoken is watching him move through an empty room; that Yusaku is not closing the distance between them all.

He’s used to that. And yet, he still wants to change it. He wishes he could somehow reach across the network and shake Ryoken by his shoulders, somehow reassure him that Yusaku isn’t and never has been afraid of him.

“I know you would never do that to me.” He says, but the words aren’t nearly enough. Even though he knows it’s useless, he reaches out for Revolver’s hand. He knows he must look like a fool.

Maybe he is a fool, because for a moment, he swears he can feel the heat of Ryoken’s skin through the fabric of a glove, can feel the solid weight of flesh and bone.

And then the illusion is gone, and he’s touching nothing at all. But Revolver’s gone still and tense, his face slack and his eyes wide. Yusaku can see his own reflection in the visor before those unblinking eyes, and that’s when he realizes Revolver has stopped breathing.

“Revolver?”

“I…I felt that.” It’s rare to fear Revolver’s voice so shaken outside of the last turn of one of their duels. “You just—you just touched my hand?”

“I tried to.” Yusaku admits. “It didn’t work.”

“It _did_. How is that possible?”

“It’s _not._ ” It really isn’t. Because Ryoken is kilometers away, logged into VRAINS, which makes this image before him some kind of doubly virtual projection, and Yusaku is in the real, physical world, conscious and everything. Ryoken is implying that he felt Yusaku touch him, in VRAINS, while he was standing in front of whatever setup he has for spying. It's absurd.

“Nothing you do is.” Revolver huffs. “Try it again.”

Yusaku blinks, incredulous. “Are you asking me to _touch_ you?” If this experience didn’t start out as surreal, it sure has reached that point now.

“Don’t be childish, Playmaker.” There’s a hint of excitement in Revolver’s very serious voice, and the glimpse of a teasing smile in the corners of his lips. He’s trying very hard to hide both. “This is for science.”

“…Sure.” How can Yusaku say no to that?


	17. Blanket

His father taught him to love the stars. It was probably one of the only pure, untainted interests his father ever shared with him.

The night sky hasn’t been the same since his father died, but Ryoken doesn’t quite remember what was different about it before. In the peak of winter, the darkest days of the year, the lights hanging above them are shining as brightly as they ever have.

It should be romantic, sentimental. Instead, Ryoken is vibrating with the force of Yusaku’s shivers, listening to his boyfriend’s teeth chatter.

Ryoken glares at his companion, who glares right back even as he curls tighter into Ryoken’s side.

“It’s damn cold.” Yusaku mutters defensively, burrowing his face into the zipped collar of Ryoken’s old jacket: yet another spoil of war Yusaku stole from his closet because Yusaku is too cheap to buy his own clothes. It looks good on him, though. Puffy coats suit Yusaku’s delicate features more than they do Ryoken’s sharp angles.

It’s all very distracting. “I’m trying to have a moment.” What did he have to do for a moment of peaceful recollection and self-mediation?

“You’re always having a moment.” Yusaku points out mercilessly, giving up on the collar and instead electing to bury his ice-cold nose into Ryoken’s neck. He barely restrains himself from flinching away, but Yusaku’s equally chilled fingers have his arm in a vice-grip. “Can you have your moment inside? Preferably by the heater?”

Obviously not. Back when they were first house-hunting, he chose this house because he thought the rooftop patio would make for an optimal stargazing/brooding space. But of course, Yusaku would just foil his plans again; one of the many pitfalls of cohabitation.

 Thankfully, Ryoken came prepared this time. He tugs the blanket wrapped around their shoulders a little tighter around them each and moves the attached dial up to its highest setting. Yusaku eyes him suspiciously the whole time, but is apparently too cold to bother with any further moving or talking.

As the heated blanket takes effect, Yusaku melts further into his side, finally satisfied. 

“Fine. You win this round, Revolver.” He struggles to not smile as Yusaku concedes.  _So much for brooding,_  he thinks as he leans his head on Yusaku’s, feeling soft hair tickle his cheek. Maybe it’s still his loss after all.


	18. Jealous

It’s a normal day, up until Ryoken shows up and sits both Yusaku and Kusanagi down at a table.

“I have a business proposal.” He says. They just stare back. “SOL is hosting an exclusive event in a month, and I need in.”

“Don’t you have a spy in SOL?” Ai asks dubiously, poking his head out of Yusaku’s duel-disk.

“They will not be in position to attend.” Ryoken seems displeased by this, his eyes sliding shut for a moment, before reopening with increased intensity. “And attending under a fake name at the current time is too risky.” He pulls out a piece of paper and slides it over the table to Kusanagi.

Kusanagi looks at it, his eyebrows climbing higher on his forehead. “What is this?”

“A catering application.” Their visitor’s voice is layered with no small amount of disdain. “If you can get in, I can get in with you, as an employee.”

Kusanagi and Yusaku exchange glances. Both of them turn to look at their truck, and then turn their eyes back Ryoken with identically skeptical expressions.

Refusing to take the hint, Ryoken continues to watch them expectantly. Kusanagi awkwardly coughs, a little ashamed. “…Have you seen us? Do you really think an event like this will want us?”

A dangerous smile creeps over Ryoken’s lips. “They will if there are no other options.”

* * *

They set up shop in the convention hall. Yusaku’s never seen Kusanagi look so nervous, his pale face turning a little green as he stares over the crowds of exclusive SOL sponsors, clientele, and DM big-shots. Yusaku is pretty sure he caught glimpses of some members of the Crawford family among the VIPs. Industrial Illusions’ CEO is here with them, apparently, to announce the newest additions to the game.

Yusaku has personally hacked the servers, bank records, and correspondences of roughly half the people in the room, and he’s certain Ryoken’s rap sheet is even worse. Ryoken, who’s cool as anything and clearly in his natural habitat, even with an apron tied around his waist, despite the odd glances their set up is receiving. The other caterers, the few that Hanoi didn’t sabotage, are giving them offended glances, clearly affronted that their elaborate appetizers are going to be served alongside hot dogs.

Kusanagi tried his best. He’s been experimenting all week, trying to make a catering menu that wouldn’t be too offensive. The result includes something called ‘a pig-in-a-blanket’, which Yusaku still finds a little mystifying. But despite their efforts, it’s apparent that they’re out-of-place and understaffed. To better fit in with the bustling busboys and waiters the other caterers have brought, Ryoken dressed them both in neat black slacks and stiff white dress shirts. Now he’s making rounds around the room with a dazzling smile and a tray, positioning himself in all the right places.

Ryoken’s supposed to be inconspicuous. Instead, with every step he’s drawing the eyes of women, young entrepreneurs and bored wives gazing after him hopefully.

Something about it is deeply aggravating.

The businessman Yusaku shoves his own tray in front of take one glance at his face, jumps, and excuses himself. The rest of the little social circle subtly don’t meet his eyes and inch away. Across the room, a graceful woman is drifting after Ryoken, chattering in his ear.

The space around Yusaku is comparatively empty, all the attendees drifting to apparently anywhere else on the open floor. He sees his own venomous scowl in the reflection of a glass on his tray, and feels a little pleased by just how well it shows how much he hates everything about this.

Turning his eyes back to the one to blame, he finds Ryoken looking back. Their eyes meet. Ryoken makes a finger gun with his free hand and shoots at him with a knowing smirk.

Yusaku valiantly resists the urge to throw his tray across the room like a Frisbee.


	19. New Year's Promise

He doesn’t try to fall back asleep, after the nightmare. Instead he waits, hours passing by like sand creeping through an hourglass, for the yellow light of dawn to creep through his window. When it finally comes, it bathes the world in brilliant gold.

He dresses in his new school uniform, even if the start of school is months away. He doesn’t have anything else to wear, not to where he’s going. With a heavy heart, he drags the drawer of his desk open and reaches for what he always avoids.

It’s the first time he’s properly held his old deck in about eight years. He kept it, not because he still wanted to see it, but as a reminder.

Unwavering, he slides it into his pocket. It’s lighter than he remembers, he thinks, but it feels heavy.

Yusaku leaves his apartment at the height of the golden hour, and waits quietly at the bus stop. There’s more people than there are most days at this time, but that’s to be expected. It’s the first day of the new year, after all.

At the eighth stop, he follows the crowd out, to the base of a tall stone staircase. If he’s ever been to a temple before, he doesn’t remember it. Yusaku thinks he might have, once, but the recollection is hazy and impersonal enough to be a misplaced memory of a movie instead. It’s pathetic, how he’s hidden himself away.

Even though it’s still early, the temple is busy. As he walks up the stairs, he’s too conscious of the weight in his pocket. His throat is raw from swallowing screams all night, and the cold air burns. The awareness of so many people around him makes his skin itch, and every step further up feels alien. But as his heart beats wildly in his chest, he think he can hear  _his_  voice. Would  _he_  be proud, to know Yusaku’s finally found the strength to brave the world?

He counts the stairs in threes, until he reaches the top.

As he washes his hand in the cold water, he imagines his weaker self going with it. The tears, the vomiting, the trembling—he washes it all away. He leaves the parts of himself he hates, the broken pieces he never could make fit back together, in the water.

People chatter all around him, about fortunes and  _kotatsu_  and their hopes for the future.

Is  _he_  waiting for Yusaku, hoping? Is  _he_  alone and scared, knowing no rescue is going to come? Or is  _he_ okay? Did  _he_ make it out? Or is it already too late?

For too long, Yusaku has choked on those questions. Wasting time trembling under his covers like the same scared little kid, as if there wasn’t something he still needed to do. As if there wasn’t someone he needed to save.

He’s done waiting. Maybe he was already done waiting all those years ago, in that cell, and everything since then has just been time whiled away in vain. No more; Yusaku is going to do more than survive for tomorrow. He is going to live and thrive no matter what stands in his way, whether it be his own night terrors or a terrorist group thousands strong.

Bowing twice, Yusaku claps his hands together, and thinks about the new year.

From today on, he will pretend to be normal. One: he will go to school. Two: he will do the work and get the grades. Three: he will talk back when spoken to. No more days spent hiding in his apartment, terrified of stepping outdoors. No more flinching away from crowds or hiding in his hood.

Starting with this, he will face the world head on. The truth, justice,  _that_  person—none of them can be kept from him any longer.

And from this day forward, he won’t be afraid again. That is the promise he makes, before he first enters Link VRAINS.


	20. Jealous (remix)

As hard as they tried to destroy VRAINS, he could admit that he appreciates it more now that it’s back. At the very least, it makes the whole ‘living-on-a-boat’ thing a bit more bearable. VRAINS has trees—fake trees, yes, but that is still better than  _kelp_ —and with the new update, fruity virtual drinks that come with little umbrellas.

Maybe almost dying has made Spectre a little more sentimental. But considering that they barely survived their attempt to suicide-bomb the apex of human progress, he thinks he’s earned some PG piña coladas.

“So this is how far we’ve fallen, huh,” Ryoken mutters as he slumps back into his seat across from him. Or at least, Spectre’s pretty sure the generic, auburn-haired avatar across from him is Ryoken.

“Did the transaction go well?” Spectre asks, not at all genuinely interested.

“As well as selling illegal upgrades to idiots can go.” Ryoken mutters, materializing his own stupid drink and eying it warily. “We used to have hundreds of pawns to do this kind of shit for us.” Those were the good days, before seasickness and having to share a single bathroom between four men.  _Thanks a lot, Playmaker. Hope you like our house._  “Now I have to sell banned mods to  _penguins.”_ Ugh, furries. The worst.

Ryoken pauses thoughtfully, then says, “I should be a dragon.”

Absolutely not. There are limits to Spectre’s loyalty. Dying is one thing, but  _that_  is where he draws the line. “That’s dumb.”

Ryoken raises his eyebrows at him. “You could be a tree.”

Tempting. Very, very tempting. He could have some strong branches, some glossy leaves,  _bark—_

“If you keep making that expression, I swear I’ll drown you before you can logout.” Ryoken growls, and Spectre forces his face back into something pleasantly polite.

“You’re just mad because Playmaker hasn’t come back.” Spectre takes a smug sip of his drink. “Don’t pretend that  _that’s_ not the real reason we’re here.”

Ryoken clearly tries very hard not to look out the window, and utterly fails. In plain view, Playmaker’s face rotates in the sky, inescapable and ominous. Ryoken had barely been able to tear his eyes from it since they arrived.

Personally, Spectre thinks it is all rather unfair. They had worked for the better half of ten years to terrorize SOL and VRAINS, and yet  _they_  didn’t get giant holographic bounty posters hanging over the city. Clearly, somebody at SOL had caught Ryoken’s obsession with Playmaker. And here Spectre had been hoping it wasn’t contagious.

“Playmaker? I know him!” It’s almost comical how Ryoken’s head slowly swivels to glare at the source of the boisterous voice drifting their way. A burly avatar in blue armor is beating his chest in front of a pretty girl. Actually, isn’t that the guy Faust kidnapped? “He’s my best friend!”

 _Oh,_  Spectre thinks, taking another sip of his drink.  _This is gonna be good._

Ryoken frowns murderously at them, his fingers clenching his own drink too tightly to be casual. The unknowing object of his ire continued to dig a deeper hole. “We’re pretty much  _soulmates_.”

Spectre tries very hard not to laugh as Ryoken’s entire face twitches.

“ _What,”_ there’s so much venom in the single word that Vyra could run a toxicology report on it, “did that  _bottom-feeder_  just say?”

“Something about being Playmaker’s soulmate, or something.” Repeating it only makes Ryoken’s face twist further. He looks so personally affronted that Spectre just can’t help himself. “Or maybe it was prisoner of destiny?”

“Wait here.” Ryoken stands up, his hands already crackling with the telltale electricity of the illegal program they’d been selling all day. “I just realized we forgot to test our software.”


	21. Jacket, pt. 2

The hardest part of their escape, in the end, is getting Yusaku into  _their_  car.

Yusaku digs his heels in, even as Ryoken pulls on him insistently. Understandably, Yusaku is wary of the situation and all the people involved. This isn’t the first time Ryoken has led Yusaku to a nondescript vehicle, and he’s all too aware of their shared memories of that evening reflected in Yusaku’s wide eyes. With the sky turning red above their heads as the sun sinks, this scene is all too familiar.

It’s different this time, he tells himself. Ryoken’s no longer the child that followed his father blindly, nor is he the same teenager that did as he was told without question. This time, he’s the one in charge.

“Do you trust me?”

Yusaku is quiet, his green eyes staring unwaveringly into Ryoken’s own. It is not a topic either of them have ever broached willingly between them, too complicated and heavy even when they found their interests aligned. It was easier to just drop tools at Yusaku’s feet and walk away than actually talk about it. Easier to pretend that what was between them was just a matter of convenience.

Should this person trust him? No. He certainly should not. But Yusaku has never been the best at making sensible decisions.

Maybe the real question is whether Ryoken can really trust himself to not fuck this up.

Yusaku’s hand squeezes his. As expected, there’s not a trace of fear in his eyes.  _Foolish,_ he almost says, but he forces the reprimand down. He can ruthlessly mock Yusaku’s stubborn recklessness another time, when they aren’t in such imminent danger.

When he opens the car door, Yusaku slides in. Kyoko is watching them through the rearview mirror over her sunglasses, while Faust peeks over his shoulder in the passenger seat. It’s awkward, heavy tension settling in the air as Ryoken takes his place alongside their guest in the back. The harsh click of the doors locking only punctuating the heavy atmosphere.

Yusaku curls his arms around himself, pulling the jacket tighter around his shoulders until he’s a tense ball of imperceptibly quivering limbs. His eyes remain bright and aware, trained ahead of him, until they all have no choice but to look away.

This isn’t going to be easy on any of them, even if Yusaku isn’t half as volatile as he used to be, before Ryoken’s father took his last breath. The accusations Yusaku can lay at their feet, even as he  _doesn’t,_  fill the car like water.

But adrenaline doesn’t last forever, and soon Yusaku’s apparently desperate struggle catches up with him. Lulled by the slow lurch of the car in the traffic and the still silence, it’s not long before even those lucid green eyes begin to slide shut.

The sense of relief is almost tangible as Yusaku falls asleep. Not giving himself anytime to overthink, Ryoken reaches over and guides Yusaku’s head over to his shoulder.

They return to the docks, not the mansion. With how long it took them to just escape the crowded city streets, there’s no doubt that their new enemies have their plates. Returning home is too risky, for now.

There’s no time for deliberating, but still Ryoken hesitates to wake Yusaku. It’s not  _just_  that Yusaku makes such a pitiful picture like this, curled up with his face so unusually slack; he’s not certain he’ll even be able to convince Yusaku to willingly step over the threshold of their yacht. Escaping with them is one thing, but stranding himself with them is another.

And.

And what?

And this is an opportunity. The Ignis is long gone, though Ryoken has no idea to where or when it fled, but that doesn’t mean there’s not anything about this situation he can take advantage of. It would be so much simpler to take down Playmaker, for one thing, if the Cyberse he possessed were to vanish in the confusion.

Ryoken knows what his father would have him do, and that is the hardest part of truly coming into his own as Hanoi’s leader. He’s not just making decisions for himself, but for an organization, for  _mankind,_  and that means that sometimes he must compromise his own principles.

His past hangups over such matters ended with his father dead, after all.

He slides an arm under Yusaku’s knees and curls another around his back, and lifts. For someone so thin, Yusaku is a heavy deadweight in his arms. His eyelids flicker, almost waking, and Ryoken mutters comforting nonsense in his ear.

The body in his arms relaxes again, and he’s not at all sure how to process that. Something heavy settles in his dry throat, even as he ignores it to board. 

Spectre waits for them in the main cabin, settled by the wheel, and his sharp blue eyes stare unrepentantly at the figure curled in Ryoken’s arms.

“Start the engine,” Ryoken orders, before the other teenager can open his mouth. But even as Spectre turns back to the controls and the guttural purr of the engine starts, Ryoken can hear all the words Spectre didn’t say.

As they leave the docks behind, he sets Yusaku down in his and Spectre’s cabin. Something like guilt sits heavy in his chest as he fishes out Yusaku’s deck from his pocket. He takes the phone as well, turning it off and pulling out the sim card with practiced ease.

Kusanagi Shoichi will worry, and he will try to call, but he will not be the only one trying to find Yusaku. Even though they have protections against being traced, it’s not a risk they can afford to take, not while their opponents remain a mystery. Kusanagi is already being monitored, even if their mysterious foes seem to still be of the belief that he’s nothing more than a food vendor, so the less Kusanagi knows, the better.

They can afford no liabilities, especially not with Yusaku’s safety at stake. He’s safer with them, out here at sea, where even the most dedicated of pursuers will struggle to track them.  

And likewise, as the one tasked with shielding humanity from the Cyberse, Ryoken cannot allow any liabilities here either. The deck is heavy in his hands. It’s a betrayal of the faith Yusaku has shown him, he knows. Then again, they both knew the answer to the question he asked should have been  _no._

Should he really feel guilty over the inevitable? This is for the best for them, Yusaku included.

But when he checks the cards, worn on the edges and slightly faded, a smile cuts his face like a mishandled razor. It’s not Playmaker’s, not even a single Cyberse hidden amongst a dummy deck of worthless cards.

_Not so trusting after all, are you?_

Refusing to acknowledge the relief that lightens his shoulders, he can’t help but approve.


	22. Smooth

Ryoken is a stubborn man. He has to be. It takes a special kind of trained bullheadedness to lead a terrorist organization for the better half of a decade, without ever once having anything to show for it.

But even the most stubborn of men had their limits, and Ryoken eventually reached his. So here his is, after being bullied and cajoled and teased for well over a month, at Cafe Nagi’s metaphorical doorstep.

It’s such a stupid task, he doesn’t even know why he feels so nervous. A bit of hair, a bit of saliva—really, how hard can it be to get a couple of samples? It’s not like Genome is a real geneticist, or even a biologist; the guy specialized in computer science and programming. Ryoken could spit in the test-tube himself and Genome wouldn’t even know the difference between his and Yusaku’s “DNA”.

But Ryoken’s not going to do that, because he’s not a coward, and he’s not love-sick, and he’s certainly not a love-sick coward, no matter what anyone else said.

He approaches his prey as casually as he can manage. Settled in his natural habitat, Yusaku is at the table by the truck with a soft drink and the remains of what must have been lunch. Ryoken’s eyes hone in on the straw sticking out of Yusaku’s drink, watching as it disappears between Yusaku’s lips.

Yusaku isn’t surprised to see him, nor does he seem to think there’s anything out of the ordinary about the way Ryoken strides towards him. It’s nice that they’ve come so far, because once he thought it would impossible for Yusaku to be so lax in his presence again. Step by step, they’ve found ways to trust each other again.

And, well, Ryoken doesn’t hesitate to take advantage of that. Today, Ryoken is a man on a mission.

Yusaku looks up at him as he comes up to his side, Ryoken’s shadow falling over his face. Resisting the smug smirk he feels pulling at the edges of his lips, Ryoken give his best, most-dazzling smile.

“You have something in you hair.”

The smile catches Yusaku off-guard, big green eyes going wide. He’s defenseless as Ryoken reaches up and brushes his fingers through his dark hair; the locks are soft and feathery against his fingers as he takes his time, pretending to fumble. When he draws his hand back a moment later, it’s with a loose strand of hair clenched subtly between his fingers.

Yusaku’s faces turns a little pink, and Ryoken’s eyes follow the flush back to Yusaku’s lips. All he needs now is a saliva sample. With a distraction, maybe an arm over the shoulder or around the waist, he should be able to grab the straw without Yusaku noticing—

Quick as a viper, Yusaku pushes up from his seat and pecks a kiss onto Ryoken’s lips. The brief flash of warmth comes and goes in an instant, far too short. His face burns as he registers the lingering moisture on his lips.

As Yusaku entwines their arms and stares up into Ryoken’s face, he asks, “That’s what you wanted, right?”


	23. lick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aka the real reason Firewall was banned

The first and last attack crushes him into dirt at the bottom of a neat little crater. Another Firewall-OTK combo. A FTK, at that. He hadn’t even stood as much of a chance as he usually did. What the hell.

“I really thought that it would work.” He can hear Vyra whining from somewhere to his left, still collapsed in her own respective crater. Faust, the first to go down, has limped his way over and is helping her crawl out of it.

Moving sounds like a pain in the ass, so Ryoken just figures he’ll stay here at the bottom of his hole for the rest of his miserable life. Or until he can put Firewall Dragon on the ban list.

So much for his generals’ grand master plan to finally defeat Playmaker. The “status ailment” program Vyra created and hid in Ryoken’s protection software,  _without even asking him_ , had activated right in time, but the “reason hindering” effects had…not been quite what any of them expected.

Apparently, for Playmaker, dueling under the influence isn’t even a handicap. Because of course not.

Someone stumbled over to the edge of his crater. Probably Spectre. “Leave me here to die.” Ryoken groans.

That same someone stumbles over the edge and slides down, only to bodily throw themselves over him. Grunting at the impact of their weight, Ryoken finds his mouth full of blond and red hair.

Playmaker. Great.

“Get off.” He snaps, but Playmaker just starts patting his arms and chest clumsily. Gloved hands rub over his shoulders and a nose buries itself into the nook of his throat.

Trying to bat away the fingers that are making their way south, Ryoken studiously ignores the legs tangling with his own. Playmaker only clings tighter as Ryoken forces himself into a sitting position, eagerly hooking an arm around his neck and nuzzling at his temple.

“Found you.” Playmaker’s usually firm voice is slurred, but no less confident. “I found you.” Drawing the words out, Playmaker pecks a fierce kiss on his exposed cheek.

“You did.” Ryoken replies with all the patience he can muster. “Now, off.”

But because the universe hates him, as if getting trashed by Firewall wasn’t humiliating enough, turns out Playmaker is a handsy drunk.

“Man, what did you guys  _do_  to him?” The Ignis complains, still stuck safely to Playmaker’s wrist and therefore his wandering hands. Ryoken refuses to acknowledge it. It wasn’t even his idea. He wanted to face Playmaker at his best, no matter what.

Not that the virus had done much to hamper that, actually.

A hot puff of breath is his only warning before teeth graze over the shell of his ear. Despite himself, he shivers at the bolt of heat Playmaker’s mouth sends through him. Bad thoughts, bad thoughts. No matter how well he played, Playmaker is still completely and utterly impaired right now.

Knowing that doesn’t stop the lips lathering his bare nape with attention, nor the hands that grope at his chest through his jacket.

His own traitorous arm has crept around Playmaker’s waist. To steady him, obviously, because despite his enthusiasm Playmaker’s still teetering off balance in his lap.

Undeterred, Playmaker changes marks from his throat to his lips. Which are sadly undefended: a complete miscalculation in designing this avatar on his part. Too disappointed to feel anything but exasperated and a little fond, Ryoken blocks him with a finger over his adventurous lips.

For a moment, he thinks Playmaker will get the message and stop there.

And then Playmaker licks his fingers.

Playmaker. Top ranking duelist Playmaker. Dignified, stoic Playmaker. With Ryoken’s fingers in his mouth.

Feeling something short-circuit in his brain, Ryoken prays for his ancestors to give him strength. And patience.

“Alright, time for you to log out.” He stays the words as sternly as he can, but pulling his hand away takes all the self-discipline he can muster. Spectre is peeking over the crater’s rim now and very unsubtly snickering at them.

“But I won.” Playmaker is not pouting at him, nor is Playmaker speaking in such a sulky voice. Nope. Not happening. Ryoken will purge all record of these events in existence.

“You sure did.” And how, at that.

Finally relinquishing his groping, Playmaker frowns at him. “I want a prize. You said you’d get Ai if you won. What do  _I_ get?”

Ryoken should absolutely not ask. He should log out. But his mouth is already moving. “What do you want?”

The answer is immediate. “You.”

Spectre makes a very inappropriate hand gesture, the others gathered behind him with amused expressions.

Ryoken has to end this before it gets anymore embarrassing. “You’re basically drunk right now, Playmaker.”

“Be my Valentine.” Gloved fingers seize him by his jacket, forcing him to look into steely green eyes. 

Playmaker really  _is_ drunk. “It’s not Valentine’s Day.” February had already passed them by. Ryoken spent that particular day of designated commercially-sponsored PDA hiding from his feelings. Taking one of Playmaker’s wrists in hand, he drags it around his shoulders and heaves them both back onto their feet. Playmaker refuses to carry his own weight and instead leans against him, still trying to catch his gaze as Ryoken starts dragging them out.

“I bought chocolate for you.” The words make him pause, but only for a moment. Truthfully, it’s not a surprise. Except Playmaker keeps talking. “Every year.” Ryoken’s heart skips a beat, even as his throat seems to close up. Every year? Since all the way back then? “I couldn’t afford anything good at first. Just candy bars.” The image of a traumatized little orphan scraping together spare change to buy shitty candy for a scumbag like him is just too cruel. “I wanted to give them to you. But I couldn’t find you.” Ryoken’s the worst. The absolute worst. He’s not even sure why his brain is so certain that  _that_ is  _his_  fault and is pumping him full of guilt, but it sure is. He’s being guilt-tripped, and he can’t even be mad about it. Playmaker is too earnest—too blunt, really—a person to be telling him anything but the truth. “Now I found you. And I won. So you have to be my Valentine.”

Ryoken grasps for the least painful part of that garbled confession to latch on to. “I don’t think that’s quite how it works.”

At the top of his crater of shame, the others gather around and continue to stare. Ryoken turns his eyes on the real cause of this headache, the Ignis. “Log him out.”

The AI doesn’t have a mouth, but Ryoken can still tell it’s laughing at him. But the world decides to give him a break and Playmaker vanishes from his grip in a flurry of data.

His subordinates shift on their feet awkwardly. “What do we do now?”

Not all the Aspirin in the world could make the conversation he needs to have with them about  _all_  this bearable. And they all got their asses handed to them already. He finds the energy to shrug. “You guys take the rest of the day off.”

Unabashed, all four of them look at him curiously. They don’t even need to ask, he can tell they want to know what Ryoken will be doing in the meantime.

“I have ten years of White Day gifts to catch up on.”


	24. not quite the definition of online dating, pt. 4

Maybe Yusaku is more ill than he first estimated, because his face seems to be strangely warm. He just feels so stupid, reaching up to poke the arm of what he knows is little more than a visual and auditory hallucination. His fingers pass right through, and Revolver makes a displeased noise.

“Nothing. Try harder.” 

“That easy for you to say.” How exactly is he supposed to  _ try harder? _ Is it entirely subconscious? Or a matter of concentration? As easily as moving through air, his hand just glides right through Revolver’s chest, until he’s practically waving to himself from the other side of Revolver’s torso.

Revolver shifts, even with Yusaku’s hand stuck inside him, until he’s looking right into Yusaku’s face with a cold, unimpressed expression. Yusaku finds himself stalling in place, caught by the color of Revolver’s eyes. They’re no longer the bright, hazard yellow of before, but they aren’t quite a match for his real eyes either, the hue far more lavender than Ryoken’s icy blue gaze. 

“What were you thinking the first time?”

About how much he wanted to touch Revolver, even if it was completely impossible, but Yusaku is not going to say that aloud. 

“Nothing.” He says firmly instead, pulling back. His hand leaves Revolver’s chest without so much as a ripple. “It was probably just your imagination.”

“Oh?” Revolver chuckles, a familiar note of mockery reminding Yusaku of their early duels, when Revolver looked at him as something small and inconsequential. “It’s not like you to give up so easily. Especially not before you’ve even  _ tried.” _ Yusaku feels himself bristling, the blatant accusation smarting if only for how baseless they both know it is. Revolver knows exactly what Yusaku is capable of when he has the right motivation, better than anyone. Surviving torture, conquering datastorms, defeating insurmountable opponents; Revolver said himself that the impossible is Yusaku’s specialty. 

But Revolver just smirks, crossing his arms. “Is that really the best explanation you can think of?” He shakes his head. “You’ve lost your edge, Playmaker.”

Revolver is antagonizing him, and it's obvious it only pisses Yusaku off more. 

What was different about that moment when he felt them connecting, just for a fraction of a second? His earnest desire to be closer? Or the fact that he wasn’t really trying?

What he wanted to touch in that moment wasn’t Revolver, not necessarily, but the person behind both the avatar and the hallucination. The consciousness linked with the network, controlling the avatar that Yusaku’s mind interpreted as corporeal despite the sheer impracticality of the very notion. 

Yusaku reaches out again, but this time, he lets his hands stay slack at his side's. Instead, he focuses on that rebellious, incomprehensible sixth sense that comes and goes, and feels the distant pulse of the network sweeping over his senses. 

It’s  _ here _ that he can touch Revolver, not back in his apartment. He has to exist in both at once, in two separate realities.

Opening the eyes he didn't realize he closed, Yusaku pretends the person before him is solid flesh and bone, something his hand can’t possibly move through. 

And they touch, hand to hand. He can feel the coarse fabric of Revolver’s glove against his skin, and the weight of his muscle and bone within. Revolver is there, in the network, as warm and solid as he would be if Yusaku himself were standing next to him in avatar form. 

Caught off guard, Revolver’s face has gone slack, staring at the hand creeping up his arm. He’s tense and still under Yusaku’s palm, and suddenly Yusaku realizes Revolver couldn’t move away from his touch even if he wanted to. It’s not a matter of reaching for the image he sees, but for the presence he recognizes in the network, the mind he can trace back to among the millions of others. 

Maybe Revolver realizes the same thing, or maybe he’s trying to brush Yusaku’s touch off and finding he can’t, but he shakes his head. “Enough.” His voice is tight, and rough, shredded on the edges. 

Yusaku reaches up with his other hand and places it on Revolver’s shoulder. He’s not sure where to go from there, as unfamiliar with intimacy as he is with linking with the network like this, but he doesn’t rush. There’s time to explore, to figure what feels right, to relearn how to hug someone.

It’s not so hard to make theory into practice and loop his arms around Revolver’s middle. Curiously, he rests his ear against a firm chest, feeling the push of Revolver’s lungs as he takes a startled breath. There’s no heartbeat, just the hum of data and running code. 

“Off.” Revolver says, his voice cracking over the edges of the word. Under the mask, his face seems redder than before.

“You started this.” Yusaku reminds him, before pushing up on his toes to stare at Revolver nose to nose. “I could kiss you, you know.”  He doesn't know where the words come from, his mouth moving before his brain. It sounds like a threat. No, he means it as a  _ threat _ , because apparently Ryoken can't run from this, not like he ran away before. “There’s nothing you could even do to stop me.”

“Like you have the guts.”

Never one to back down from a challenge, Yusaku tilts his head and presses forward. The angle is the hardest part to manage, trying to avoid the edge of glass threatening to poke into his face. And even if the gesture is more sideways than he’d like, Revolver's lips are cool and slack under his, the sensation spreading through him until everything tingles pleasantly.  

Wrapping his arms around Revolver’s neck, he presses harder and harder until Revolver’s lips are parting, and things become warm and wet. He feels the vibration of Revolver groaning more than he hears it, and though he wants more and his toes are curling against the floor, Yusaku pulls away.

The deep, twisted frustration on Revolver’s flushed face gives him pause, and suddenly Yusaku realizes just how much he’s stepped over the carefully drawn line between them. 

“Fuck.” Revolver whispers, “How do I touch you?”

Ah. He misread the  _ kind _ of frustration Revolver is feeling.

“I don’t think you can.” Yusaku admits. “I don’t think it goes both ways.”

That, evidently, isn't what Revolver wants to hear. He glares at Yusaku for a long, tense moment, and then says, “Wait here.”

Then he's gone, just as suddenly as he appeared.

And Yusaku realizes Revolver had been watching him kiss air in the middle of his empty apartment.

“Fuck.” 


	25. Alt+Delete, TWO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The completely unnecessary but inevitable sequel!
> 
> I actually wrote this one forever ago and then just forgot to finish the last few paragraphs...

_ Thank you, Takeru, _ Yusaku thought to himself as Revolver went down with a startled grunt and a heavy thud. He pinned him by the shoulder and the arm with all his weight and a knee in his back. Revolver bucked in his grip, seething. 

“Playmaker!”

Yusaku struggled to keep him down, mind racing. What was he supposed to do  _ now? _ Ai had probably gotten away, but so long as Yusaku was stuck here grappling he couldn’t exactly make his own escape. 

And then things got worse, because Spectre chose that exact moment to arrive, striding through the door with a serious expression.

“Revolver-sama, we can’t find— _ what the hell are you doing to Revolver-sama?” _

“Uh,” Yusaku said, looking between Spectre and Revolver’s furious expression, which was mostly pressed into the floor. In his brief moment of distraction, he lost his grip and the world tilted as he was seized and brought down, hitting the floor hard and jostling his shoulder. Biting down on his lip in pain, he held back a yelp as a hand buried into his hair and smacked his cheek into the tiles. Another clamped around his wrist and pinned it against his back.

Having successfully reversed their position, Revolver heaved an aggravated sigh and Spectre wandered over, obviously wary.

"Your report, Spectre." Revolver prompted as Yusaku shifted uncomfortably under him, trying to get a view of what was going on. He mostly just saw the obnoxious white of Spectre's slacks.

Instead of answering, Spectre made a curious sound. “What’s Playmaker doing here?”

Yusaku jerked his arm, trying to work it free, but only succeeded in pulling something. He puffed out an aggravated breath into the tile and wondered if Ai had the sense to send someone to rescue him. 

Revolver's voice was trapped somewhere between deeply annoyed and tiredly amused. “Playmaker was being held captive by the Ignis when I arrived.”

“Really?” Spectre hummed, crouching down next to Yusaku so their eyes could meet. Yusaku gave him his best glare, but Spectre just leered back. “Think someone like you can play the damsel in distress, huh?”

“Get off of me.” Yusaku grumbled against the floor.

“Now, now, is that any way to thank your knight in shining armor?” Spectre mocked, his stupid eyes bright with delight. “It’s more traditional for the princess to reward her hero with a kiss, you know.”

Yusaku didn’t know what sort of face he was making, nor what face Revolver was making either, but it was clear by Spectre’s expression that both were rather telling. Spectre gave Revolver a flat, disbelieving look. “…Is that how he got that close to you?”

“Uh,” Revovler said as his grip slackened just a little, and Yusaku managed to catch a glimpse up of him. The color his face turned was telling its own story.

Amusement and offense battled for dominance over Spectre's face, eventually settling into a twisted smirk. He looked at Yusaku with laughing eyes. “You little minx.”

Yusaku resisted his urge to stick his tongue out at the creep. That would be childish, and he would probably end up tasting the floor. 

Spectre rose back up to his full height and crossed his arms behind his back. “Well, while this hussy was harassing you, the Ignis got away.” Yusaku honestly didn’t know how to respond to that. He’d never been called that before, especially not in such a pretentious and nasally voice, and it was actually kind of funny. 

Revolver's grip tightened, his weight shifting on top of Yusaku. It seemed like he was annoyed, but not entirely at Yusaku. Maybe he was just getting stiff— Yusaku's and lower back certainly were. An ache was developing at the base of his spine and in his wrist.

"At least we saved the princess." Spectre hummed, voice layered with all sorts of mockery. "So today hasn't been a complete bust." Revolver finally relented and shifted away, letting Yusaku push himself up. Which hurt something awful, but Spectre was still looking at him so Yusaku refused to show it. "How'd you get caught anyway?"

Yusaku rubbed his wrist and rolled his shoulder. Everything seemed to be in the right places, but that was probably just the virtue of virtual bodies. "Peace talks broke down." 

Spectre rose an eyebrow, obviously disbelieving. "...Since when do you negotiate?"  

_ Since I, of all people, had to start being the voice of reason,  _ Yusaku did not say, because he felt like that would be setting himself up for another 'princess' comment. If he, out of everyone in VRAINS, was preaching peace and begging for everyone to get along, reality had truly gone sideways. 

One would think that after more than a year of pleading with him to _stop_ _rocking the boat_ everyone would be a little more appreciative of his dedication to not sinking the goddamn ship. 

"Since he started seducing people, apparently." Revolver grumbled, a bitter twist to his lips. His cheeks were still pink. 

“Whatever.” Yusaku rolled his eyes and took an aggravated breath. Dealing with both Revolver and Spectre at the same time wasn’t exactly his idea of fun. “Don’t you guys have AIs to exterminate?” Not that they would succeed, at least until Yusaku got Jin back home. 

“Somebody sounds cranky.” Spectre chuckled, his voice oddly triumphant. “Is is because we were right and you were wrong? All of this could have been avoided if you just handed over the Dark Ignis in the first place.”

_ Asshole. _ As if it was Yusaku’s fault the Knights of Hanoi decided to antagonize the absurdly advanced AIs they made. 

“And who exactly created the Ignis in the first place?” Yusaku shot right back. “I don’t exactly remember volunteering—” 

“Enough!” Revolver snapped, and both their mouths clicked shut. Yusaku almost wanted to get the last word in, just so no one could mistake his silence for obedience. But Revolver’s arms were crossed, a look that took no more bullshit evident on his face. “Spectre, gather the others. We must pursue the Ignis.”

Spectre bowed, deference written all over his face. “Of course.” But their eyes remained locked as Spectre strode past him, back towards the door. Unsurprisingly, the moment Revolver’s back was towards him, Spectre spun around and gave Yusaku a crude gesture.

Always a step ahead, Yusaku’s own middle finger was already up.

It was probably about time he took his leave as well. Bohman was still out there, and Yusaku had the feeling the strange man was waiting for a rematch. But as he moved to leave, Revolver grabbed his arm and spun him back around.

“Where are you going?” Crystal eyes stared into his own, blazing. “Did you forget?” A devious smile was creeping over Revolver’s lips, his voice falling lower and lower. “You still owe me a kiss,” he said nice and slow, as chills shivered down Yusaku’s spine when he paused so deliberately, as if tasting his next words on his tongue, “…princess.”


End file.
